The Widow Skywalker
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
Summary: A rumor on a backwater planet sends Luke looking for answers from a woman locally known as Widow Skywalker. Post ROTJ AU
1. Accident

Hello all! Thanks for bothering to take a look at my dinky new thread. I seem to have accumulated a lot of them. O_O ^_^;; Oh.. dear... 

Now, since my darling muse Carol is currently AWOL-- probably drunk n Las Vegas, drooling over an Elvis impersonator-- I've dredged this up from my hard drive in an attempt to get myself jump started. I only have a vague idea of where this is going-- so feedback is very welcome! 

-Meredith 

Feedback Song: [happy birthday] 

__

Please give feedback to me, 

Please give feedback too me, 

Come on, give me some feedback, 

Please give feedback to me 

... eeh.. that wasn't my best. *sheepish* 

Anyway! 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

The Widow Skywalker 

by Meredith Bronwen Mallory 

mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com 

http://www.demando.net 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

"... and no Ma'am, I'm sorry, but we seem to be out. I understand completely, yes, but I still can't help you. If you can wait a week, Widow Skywalker may bring some to town with her." 

There was every chance he'd misheard it, Luke rationalized. It had only been a disembodied voice, after all, heard through the din of the market place. The young man cursed inwardly; those words, so surreal and out of place, had thrust him forcably into uncertainty. He had paused there, in the middle of the market, his heart, lungs-- indeed, the whole of him-- stilled. There awakened then old dreams, the dreams of a child without mother or father, longing for answers more detailed than the ones given by his aunt and uncle. Insanely, he'd wondered whether or not he'd stepped into one of those dreams. It was wishful enough, the idea of finding his mother by mere chance. By the time he managed to process the words, the scope of that sentence, he was unable to locate their speaker. 

Was he only to have a glimpse, and then be turned away? 

The Jedi, the only Jedi, paced back and forth restlessly in his hotel room. Coming to the wall, he turned went back the way he came, until he met with the other end of the room. So much for calm, he though dispairagingly. He tried, without success, to employ the Jedi calming technique, but each time it was shattered by the fragments of thoughts he hadn't allowed to form. Images tried to crystalize, built on those slight moments of rememberance that would sometimes strike his sister. Six times since the Battle of Endor, she had come to him-- sometimes in the middle of the night-- her eyes alive with something she'd thought lost. 

"I remembered something," she'd say, and he would open the door to let her in. Never once did he prompt her or ask her what she meant. There were times she would sit on his couch for perhaps a full ten minutes before she could even begin to articulate what she'd discovered. In the end, her words for it were as simple and unexpected as the way she remembered in the first place. 

Eating lamplight fruit for what she thought was the first time, Leia remembered another occassion. "The tree was so tall, and Mother held me up to reach them," she said, swallowing as if she could still taste it. 

Then, in the market place, she'd seen a woman with a gold circlet in her hair. "Mother wore her hair like that sometimes. It was a dark brown and long-- it went down past her knees. I used to play with the end of her braids." This was said softly, and Luke could see in her face a type of wonder, as if Leia couldn't quite believe it herself. 

Other times they were simply images, and Leia would wait while he brought something from the kitchen. Then they would sit together, on the couch, and their hands (even his mechanical one) would reach out and hold tightly. As vocal as Leia was concerning her unwillingness to train, those where the times she reached out through the Force. "I want you to see," she'd said, turning away her candid brown eyes, "and I couldn't bring it across right unless I show you this way." And she would share the images, so that he too might own them, though it broke his heart that he'd never had them in the first place. 

Luke sat down heavily, his arms resting themselves against the faded, over-stuffed chair. Each of the images was polished, as vibrant and complete as when they'd first been transferred to him through Leia's hands. He thought about them, stilled pictures, traveling through his arm, carried on his blood until he could see them with his closed eyes. 

A loving, safe shadow of Mother, bent over Leia's crib and seen again in a dream. 

Mother pushing herself away from the table, food untouched and smile faint, the look in her eyes one of almost sweet sadness. 

Glass beads, blue like Luke's own eyes, held in Mother's hand as she helped to pick up Leia's broken necklace. 

That was it, that was all he had. Three little memories that were not his own. Some nights he would lay awake, no matter what planet he was on, and stare blindly upwards. He would bring the images to the fore of his mind, memorizing the detail, gazing at them because they were his mother's only legacy. Thinking back on this, he realized he had done it more and more of late. Perhaps, he considered, it was simply the fact that his search for Force-sensitives to train had taken him far from Coruscant, and what was left of his family. Luke shook his head, as if that would help to clear his mind, and climbed to his feet once more. 

"Widow Skywalker," he murmured, trying to get a feel for it. Those two small words brought back the sounds of the market, as if to act as a background. Widow Skywalker, Mother; it seemed almost obscene that he was this close only by chance. 

But how many Skywalkers could there be in the Galaxy? 

"Alright," he said aloud, his real hand unconciously moving to touch the handle of his lightsaber. It was his, formed by his hands and his skill, but there were times it felt foreign. He could touch it, trace over the lines he'd made himself, and know instictively that they were in the wrong place. But as much as he remembered the contors of the other (his father's) lightsaber, he could not dublicate them properly. Nor should he, Luke reminded himself sternly. It was automatic, though, and he barely thought about it. He moved restlessly, possibilities stirring in his veins. If Obi-Wan had been there, Luke would have been quite embarassed at his lack of composure. "Alright," he said again, more firmly this time. He put his hands against a nearby table to stop the pacing. "Tomorrow I'll go to the market and see what I can find out." Artoo beeped questioningly from his place in the corner, and it occured to Luke suddenly that the little droid had no idea what he was talking about. At times it seemed Artoo was more of an extension, like the lightsaber, somehow always knowing his thoughts. Most of the time, Artoo was able to predict them with startling regularity. Fondly, the young Jedi reached over and placed his hand on Artoo's silver dome. 

"Just a lead I found, Artoo," he explained, "I think it's worth following up." 

The decision calmed Luke more than anything else, though it seemed to him that there had never been any question. To turn his back on this discovery, even if it consisted only of words over heard in the market place, would be violating a part of himself. Peace settled around his shoulders once more, and he smiled. Peace was a learned thing, sure enough, but it certainly helped get things done more quickly. 

There was little for Luke to do for the rest of the evening save take his supper alone in his room and retire to bed. His recent 'little scrape' on Calamari, coupled with the long voyage to Koe, had taken more out of the Jedi than he'd suspected. The lower the small, red sun of Koe slipped, the more Luke found himself longing for sleep. Yawning lightly, he finished up the plain meal of fish (which, oddly enough, reminded him more of Beru's cooking than anything else) and pulled a small, rented computer unit into his lap. Leia, though she understood the need for Jedi in the New Republic, made no secret of her personal dislike for the idea. Rationally, Luke knew that he shouldn't blame her, but he always found the thought a bitter one. If the desperate need to hold onto their memories of Mother pulled the twins together, then the memories they had of Father pushed them apart. 

"I just don't understand it," Leia would say, sometimes mournfully and other times with accusation. Often, the subject would be far from the one at hand, but Luke knew it dwelt in his sister always. Days came when Leia looked at him with half-concious suspicion, and he knew those were the times she was doubting her own origins. Her eyes would rest on him, looking like the eyes of someone else, and she would shake her head. Once or twice she put her hand on his shoulder-- to show that her confusion didn't matter-- but most of the time she turned away because it did. There was no way Luke could express to her the change in Vader, and Leia could not concieve of the idea on her own. But in spite of-- or perhaps, he admitted, because of-- her dislike for the subject, Luke always made a point of sending a report to her whenever he got the chance. She didn't always respond, he though wryly; the last messsage he'd recieved had said only that she was happy to hear he was well. Nothing regarding his search for Jedi, or his request that Threepio look for records in the Master Computer on Coruscant. Leia probably *had* set Threepio to the task, Luke considered, her failure to mention it was only to remind him of her distaste. 

'Siblings,' the Jedi thought with a small, cynical smile. At least he *had* a sister to fight with. Still, when he left out any mention of 'Widow Skywalker', he didn't bother to question himself. Why get Leia's hopes up?-- or, so the rational went. Inwardly, he held the possibility of his mother close. In theory, she had always existed, but he regarded her as one regards a towering mountain. 'Mother' was a nebulous idea; he'd never had one before. He'd known surprisingly few others, he realized. Camie's mother had been a tall woman, body bent and shaped by the winds of Tatooine, her eyes the color of sand. His only memory of her, probably the only time he'd actually *seen* the woman, was the sight of her leaning over Camie and fusing with her hair. Aunt Beru had been a mother in a way, he supposed, but she carried with her an air of childlessness that had shadowed her bright blue eyes. It was only now that Luke wondered why she'd never had any children of her own. 

Outside, the dome of the sky changed to red glass, lit only by the vanishing sun. Luke slipped into bed, ordering each muscle in his body to relax, but his eyes were always on the hill outside the window. A strong breeze ran across the land, moving in the tall grass that was only a shade darker than the sky. As the Jedi waited for sleep to claim him, his mind filled with images of a childhood on this planet; himself small, running after Leia through the jungle of tall copper grass. Just wishful thinking. He was aware of the mechanics of sleep and, as the last cog slipped into place, Luke was almost certain that tonight he was sure to dream of Mother as Leia sometimes did. 

In the end, he dreamt of Aunt Beru, seen through the kitchen door as she waved him off to play. 

He woke, but couldn't find it in himself to be disappointed.

++++++++++++++++++++++

to be continued


	2. Only the Lonely

"I entrust my body to the trap of time. Where will I wash ashore?"

-'Daybreak', Hamasaki Ayumi, "I Am" Album

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

The Widow Skywalker 2a/?

by Meredith Bronwen Mallory 

mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com 

http://www.demando.net 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

Market places, Luke thought, had to be the common language among worlds. They were all fundamentally the same, with latitude enough for variation that made each one unique. Of all places, the Jedi felt strangely at home in them. The crowds were a comfort, almost-- a reminder that he, too, was human; and there was a sense of *something* underneath the dull murmur of collective speech, something like a language under language. 

Supersticiously, he returned to the uneven cobble stone corner he'd been at the day before, waiting to hear the words again, as if they might echo. Nothing, and he moved within the living maze, wandering. He paused, asking different faces 'have you seen' and do you know', but their eyes were almost always guarded and suspicious. Having grown up on Tatooine, he knew why-- but their indifference still stung. He felt younger than he had in years, stripped of all his certainty, and father loomed large in his mind like the spectre of childhood nightmares. He remembered, now, the red glow he would see behind his eyes as a child, and the black sillohette; how he would scream and scream in the desert night. The memory of Aunt Beru's touch was almost real as the cool wind wound its way through the mass of bodies crowding the street-- she would kiss his brow, as if soothing the invisible eye that made him see such things. She had been very pretty, when he was a child, but still a long way from beautiful, and it seemed to him now that it had all just vanished one day, underneath the shadow of his father he saw in his dreams. 

The Widow Skywalker would have been Lady Skywalker once, would have been a maiden before that, who touched and knew and talked to the person that lived under Vader's armor. He tried to see her face, how she must have smiled (or did she ever smile? Was she happy to live, or resentful-- as Owen had been in the end?) -- it was like dipping a crystal in water and trying to divine from the colors. His mind called forth the softness of his childhood voice, asking questions of the woman who wanted to be his mother. 

"What happened to my real mother?" he'd said, and the implication was that the desert woman before him, who existed in varying shades of sand, was somehow fake. A poor imitation. Unreal-- a mirage just out past Mos Espa. For a moment, he wanted his aunt by his side, not to ask questions about the woman who's flesh had made his but to say... to say... Luke rested briefly against the stone wall of a small shop, putting a hand on Atroo's cool silver dome. That sensation seemed to help anchor him in a world filled with half-glimpses. He missed Beru, as desperately as he had when the applause stopped in the thunderous Yavin temple. The grief was somehow fresh and new. Aunt Beru was gone now; fire had polished her into a husk of black Onyx, crumbling in the sand, but he so wished he had remembered to tell her he loved her before he'd taken the t-16 out into the brightness of the morning. 

Artoo rocked back and forth, very suddenly-- as if his delicate instrumentation was also attuned to sensing temors within his master. Luke folded his lean body down beside the droid, sitting on the curb with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. 

"I don't know, Artoo," he said in response to the brief string of inquiring beeps. "I... found Father, and Leia had Mother all that time ago. Maybe this is all I get." His artificial hand clenched around the real one, bringing pain. "It doesn't seem right, though. "I want to see her, and not just to understand Father better, but because..." How could you explain it to a droid? Say that you hand within you an illusive, quicksilver memory of someone warm and kind? That you heard her voice just before you dropped off into true sleep, and that sometimes when you thought of the man your father had been pretending to be, you also saw her shadow-- as if the darkness was not strong enough to push her away? The little astromech droid pushed against Luke's side, gently, giving a coo that was oddly expressive. "I guess you're right," he replied, sensing in Artoo only vague concern and question. Only Threepio could truly follow the little blue machine's language. "I shouldn't give up so soon. I'm just frustrated." Briefly, he touched the Force, and a smile came to his face. Rising, he patted Artoo's little dome once more, "Come on. We should try asking around some more."

===========

Because it was the nineth day of the week, she rose early; thrusting aside the heavy quilts and climbing from the curved basin that served as her bed. In Koe's early morning veil of gold, she shivered unconcously-- it had been a long time since she hadn't been always cold to her core. Padme Naberrie Skywalker padded softly throw her one-room stone house, moving through the unguarded threshold and out into the garden she tended with all of her souring love. Rain water had collected in the wide barrel near the house, and Padme splashed the water on her face, disturbing the small golden leaves that floated on the surface. She looked away quickly as the water settled, not wanting her broken reflection to reassemble itself. On Alderaan, life-times ago, she had seen things He sent her in the water, in the curve of a silver brush, in anything reflective. There were no mirrors in her house. 

Now, to the rows and rows of oshiibara, which looked like the little pearl rosettes that had been sewn into her wedding gown. Tenderly, Padme caressed the stems as she harvested, as if to show them that the memries they stired did not upset her. Plants, oshiibara and otherwise, were much kinder than humans-- they could not speak, and thus made no promises, no false words of love. Rising to her feet, buds in hand, she turned back towards the house, her deep brown hair trailing the grown behind her-- flowers and leaves knotted in the locks as though they were welcome. She was very beautiful, still, but in a way that would hve made her a stranger to Dorme or Bail, if they still lived and could see her. A breeze, now-- chill and unnatural-- as she entered the house and Padme smiled her tears at the touch of Anakin's ghost. She said nothing, instead tracing the long, raised line of burnt skin on her arm-- she had *felt* him die, a pain that overwhelmed her as she worked by the fire. His soul's shattering had washed away all other sensations, and now she felt his nearness as easily as her own breathing. 

She was afraid, afraid to speak, to ask, and thus begin the painful wheel all over again.

Breakfast was oshiibara, boiled in the last pint of Padme's clean water; she ate the petals absently, the wind moving through the house and teasing her short shift. She resented her body, in someways, for holding out so long, and now she fed it only grudgingly. This chore completed, she wound her hair up under her black ribboned cap and stepped into the folds of her loose black dress, singing as she did the fastenings. 

"With silver buttons, all down her back--" An old nursery rhyme, about a girl and her coffin. The large, now empty water jar was tied to a wooden framework, and rested against Padme's spine like Leia's piggy-back seat once had. She kept her children's faces clear in her mind, loving them though their lives stretched before her with a mocking blankness. At the crooked gate, she saw Anakin-- he leaned his non-existant form against the irregular bars and watched her with a sad smile. He flickered too-- first the young man she had fallen in love with, then the young boy who's love had conjured her own. 

It took all her strength not to try and touch him, however briefly, as she passed.

Down the slopping hill, past the beginnings of an abbandoned foundation and all along the coppery grass feilds, her bare feet on the dirt road. Padme paused as she saw the sillohette of a building rise in the distance, knowing her journey was halfway through. The house was larger than her own-- not a difficult task-- and rambled off its main foundation with startling assymetrical chaos. The sun was just coming up over the ocean of copper grass, but Padme saw a stir of movement within the shed.

"Oy, Widow Skywalker!" a male voice, as dusty as the surroundings of the man who owned it. 

"Shindor!" Padme raised her hand in greeting, tarrying from her walk to peer into the shadows of the shed. Shndor was a large man-- a gentle giant, with a head of black hair and eyes that seemed set too far back in his skull. 

"Rest your feet a minute, won't you?" he inquired, not taking his eyes off the holoproj he was teasing with the delicacy of a doctor opperating. 

"Thank you, I will," Padme hiked up her dress and settled her self and the jar on the remnants of a landspeeder. "How are you?"

"Fine," Shindor drew the word out as he tried to settle something into place. A snap, and he hissed like a dewback kept from its food, "Damnation and all that."

"Still not working?" she asked, gazing at the holoproj with a disinterested eye. 

"I had it working before!" Shindo protested, rubbing his forehead with one large hand, "Ask Sintalia-- she was with me." He raised his gaze to meet Padme's, "Speaking of which, she's still hot set on having you embroider her wedding--"

The very word seemed to make Padme tense, "I can't."

"I know," Shindo's smile was fatherly, "Maybe I sorta understand, who can tell? Sintalia on the other hand..."

"She still asleep?" the widow asked.

"Yes--"

"Then I best be on my way," she replied, obviously eager to avoid a confrontation. Shindor nodded, and she was halfway to the wide hole in the shed tha served as the door, before his voice reached to stop her.

"Wait!" when she turned back, he was scratching his head in embarassment, "Didn't get to tell you what I picked up on the holoproj."

"Oh."

"Good news, I guess-- for the rest of the galaxy. Out here, I suppose it doesn't matter much," Shindor shrugged, "Still, I'm damn pleased, for some reason."

Padme frowned, "What is it?"

"The Rebellion-- against the Empire," Shindor's smile was wide and unself-concious, "I picked up the Geonosis station tha relays the Coruscant wave. They're saying the Emperor, and the Empire-- it's all dead." 

There was an empty joy in Padme-- triumph laced with poison-- and despite herself, she cried. They were slow tears. Shindor watched her, waiting but also a little uncomfortable. 

"That's good..." she said suddenly, smiling past the pain, "I'm glad-- that's the best news I've heard in years!"

"I didn't get much of the details," the man replied, pleased that she shared his enthusiasm. "Just that they're working to set up a government, and that this Alderaanian girl is mostly in charge of granted political, um, er..."

"Assylum?" Padme offered, her mind racing. She didn't dare hope-- she couldn't remember how. 

"Yeah, that's it-- trying to smooth things over," Shindor nodded triumphantly, "Rhea Organa, or something like that. The missus thought it was a pretty name."

"Leia?" Padme whispered, having turned away.

"That's it!" Shindor sounded confused, "Hey, Padme..."

"Thanks for the news, Shindor," she paused out in the dry feild, arms curled under her breasts. Then she turned, and continued down the path; stumbling and-- when she was far enough on her own-- crying a little as though the loss was as fresh as today. 

"Leia..."

Above all, there was happiness.


	3. A Dream is a Dream Within a Dream

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Widow Skywalker 2b/?

by Meredith Bronwen Mallory

mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com

http://www.demando.net/

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Alive. Somewhere, Leia (my Leia, my small silver piece in the eye of the storm) was alive. She breathed, her heart pumped blood, which in turn flowed through her veins. She was a real person who could think and feel and maybe there was someone she loved. Maybe, maybe, there was someone who loved her. After Koe's coppery wind had brushed away her tears, Padme began to laugh, just a little, frightening herself. Her time in the Imperial Prison had made it so that she no longer trusted her own mind, but the irony was still sharp like berry wine on her tongue. Leia helped to tear down what her father had built. For a moment, she understood those who sought redemption through their children-- an image, herself weaving complicated patterns of black and red, as Leia sat and unraveled the threads back into oblivion. 

Sometimes, Padme didn't believe in the past. It was so fresh and painful, but so far away. Nothing concrete, it seemed to change from day to day. Had she really loved a boy named Anakin? Where her children hidden away, or simply stillborn? (She had that awful reoccurring dream, where she climbed the hill, and the twins' graves were exposed, and she could see the tiny baby bones curled up in the coffins. Luke had been taken away so quickly, she sometimes wondered if he'd ever been born at all.) Between herself and the woman called Senator Nabberrie lay the golf of her hellish time in the camps-- needles, always needles, piercing her everywhere, bringing night and the dark and those things that come in the dark. There's a reason those things come in the dark; if they come in the light, you would *see* them. They, the masked Stormtroopers who sometimes seemed like devils and other times seemed like clowns, said the injections would help her forget, but she was trapped in her memories. They lied, they always lied. 

She never forgot a thing. 

Hearing someone else speak of Leia made the world much clearer, as if she was the princess in the high tower with a divine spyglass. Perhaps, Padme smiled bitterly, she thought in fairy terms too often, but she had not been a child during her childhood, and it was so much easier to believe in things like hope and love and peace in the vague land of myth. It was like walking into a painting-- looking at the Koe morning, Padme thought it was rather like the abstract vision of a madwoman-- its two-dimensional, and you can't convince yourself it's real. After all, in fairy tales, the prince is never the same as the warlock. 

Maybe that was the problem. 

"Widow Skywalker!" inwardly, Padme winced, realizing she was standing still. Her feet had halted near the old plantation, with its crumbing iron gates, as if she felt safer if she had bars to look through. Is the tiger relieved to have the humans barred from him, as he is barred from them? For a moment, she considered starting her journey again, but she simply sighed and turned around. The figure approaching was small and willowy, but growing with hurried pace. Padme hadn't even needed to look up to know it was Shindor's daughter, Sintalia. 

"Morning to you," Padme greeted, when the girl had come close enough. 

Sintalia grabbed the older woman's hands without preamble. "Widow Skywalker," she said, breathless, "Please, I know my mom and dad have talked to you, but... you have to make my wedding gown! You just have to!" Sintalia's rather unremarkable eyes widened-- she was not much more than a child, and could afford to use pity in her favor. 

"I've already explained," Padme gently freed her hands from the younger girl's grasp, "that I simply can not do it." She turned slightly, to show that her distaste was not for Sintalia, but the subject. 

"But you're even making Mom's dress for the wedding! No one within three cities is half as good as you are! I'm the bride, but my mother will outshine me because she'll be wearing something *you* made." 

"Your mother's dress is very simple and respectable, Sintalia," Padme said patiently, "she has no intention of drawing attention away from her blushing daughter." 

"My wedding is the most important day of my life!" said Sintalia passionately. In a swift movement of wind, Padme was facing the girl-child, holding her shoulders in a grip that was firm, but not unkind. 

"Is it?" Sintalia saw the strange topaz fire flash behind Padme's eyes, "You dress up in lengths of white and pearls, you carry flowers. It's all ceremony! What happens when you toss your maidenhood out the window? What happens to the rest of your life? This can't be the pinnacle." At the shattering expression of surprise on the girl's face, Padme hung her head, "I'm sorry I spoke harshly. Please forgive me." She turned, feet moving at last, glad for the weight of the water pitcher on her back. 

A hand-- how she wished it was Leia; with whom she had never had the chance to talk or advise or argue-- reached out to touch her arm. Padme did not turn, and Sintalia's voice seemed disembodied. 

"Can you tell at least tell me why?" 

Padme's eyes hid beneath her lashes, as if she could see something more than the grassy horizon, and did not want to look. "Because, I'll poison it. It's bad luck for a widow to make a wedding dress. Because your gown would be beautiful, but it would break your heart like mine was broken." 

A shuddering breath from the other girl. 

Padme said, "Please don't ask me again." 

She walked on, and knew Anakin was walking beside her on the other side of the fence. 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * 

In Clockwork City-- which was not so much a city as it was a cluster of clay buildings surrounding the thundering canal-- Padme followed the brightly-robed young women towards the central bridge. There, in the shadow of the huge canal gears and water mill, she removed the jar from its sling and drew the life-giving fluid. n Koe, the water was no blue, but an almost washed-out blood red; different minerals, she'd been told. There was talk, echoing round the canal-- young talk, gossip, laughter. Padme smiled, just a little, because if she closed her eyes she could imagine she was back on her father's farm. Securing the jar's lid and refastening it to her back, Padme meandered past the stalls of the market, not really seeing anything. She could remember when water simply came from a facet. When it seemed so trivial, and Anakin's fascination with it seemed wonderful but strange. She thought she understood him better, now. 

At the corner stall, she bought a few loaves of bread, taking them under her arm. She turned towards the booth across the street, her expression somehow going from neutral to uncomfortable happiness without really changing. 

"Deip," she said, by way of greeting, passing her hands over the smooth bolts of soft synth cloth and rough farming fabric. 

"Hello, beautiful," Deip returned, capturing Padme's hand and cupping it to receive a few delicate glass beads. "The glass-blower down near Jaquerie finished up a whole new batch of them. Aren't they nice?" 

"Very," said Padme, holding one up to the light to see the intricate metal impressions. 

"I like this one," Deip held up a silver sphere, "It's like your eyes." 

"Stop that," Padme said, with more a tone of forgiving frustration than anything else. 

"You're mean," the dark-haired girl pouted. 

"Jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but never jam today," the widow sing-songed. 

"Yesterday and tomorrow never happen," Deip pointed out. 

"Exactly." 

Deip's feline smile was the same as the first time Padme had seen her-- there had been another injection, and the distant jolting of her body as they moved her to a transport, and screaming-- there was lots of that-- before the drugs wore off and someone was kissing her-- not really kissing, but *trying* to. Then, as the world changed from a chaos of mad finger-paints to something real and true, Padme had seen Deip, crouched like a panther on the bed, smiling in a way that was not a smile at all. 

"Hey, Briar Rose," Deip's narrow eyes had narrowed even further, "the prince can't make it. You'll have to make do with me." Padme'd had a mind to tell her erstwhile rescuer that the prince had put her here in the first place. 

Then, there was the stumbling flight through the halls of the transport, bodies of Stormtroopers littered like fallen leavens. In the cockpit, the other prisoners-- women, all of them, violated, all of them, and all of them dripping in the blood of their torturers selected the furthest coordinates the hyper-drive could make, like a wild spin of the dice. They were loose, loose women, free. 

One of the prisoners-- it hadn't been Deip-- had said, "You can't lock up wild animals. Sooner or later, we bite." 

"How much do you want for the beads?" Padme inquired, casting a thoughtful glance towards the bolt of green fabric. She had three projects to finish, though, and pushed it from her mind. 

"For you, I'll sell you the whole batch for... three circles." 

"Don't favor me," the widow warned, "Your other customers will get jealous." 

"Hey, you're the only one I'd let have these," Deip wrapped the beads in a scrap of spare cloth, "No one else would do as well with them." 

A ghost of a smile, "Tell the Jaquerie grocer I'll sent my harvest to him in a few days." 

"He'll be happy to hear that," the other woman remarked, "he's already had a few people come looking for your oshiibara. He's had to turn them away." 

"That's a shame," Deip took three circles in exchange for the beads. "Thank you," Padme said earnestly. She carried the beads carefully, remembering Leia's shining, baby eyes as the little girl held up the shattered pieces f a long-ago blue necklace. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

This is the dream she has. 

She can have it when she's walking, when she's eating, or as she's sewing-- but she rarely ever has it went she's asleep. 

She did, just once, and that was enough. Maybe it was supposed to warn her, but... but even after all this time, she didn't believe in Vader. 

__

"Padme... what's wrong?" 

Rustling then, in the night-lit darkness. A warm body, all curves and smooth movement, withdrew towards the other side of the bed. 

"I had a bad dream, that's all. I'm sorry I woke you." 

"A nightmare?" 

"Yes." 

The way she said it told him it was more than that. Silence, then. He almost thought she was asleep. 

"I dreamt you were my enemy. You drew your lightsaber against me." Her voice was careful, wondering, as if she was speaking of someone else. 

As if it had no effect on her. 

"That could never happen, you know that." He hadn't meant to say it so roughly, but he needed the words. Saying it made it true. 

"There was a red light everywhere-" Laying still in the darkness, he held his breath. "- and blood, all dried but running down the walls." 

"It was a bad dream, Padme." 

It didn't sound condescending, but he almost wished it had. Instead it was a plea. She must not have heard him, or if she did it was from a long way off and she couldn't believe him through the dream. 

"There was something... something over your eyes." 

Her breath caught on the memory. Now it was real for her, "I couldn't see your eyes." 

"I would never hurt you, Padme." 

"I know." But it sounded like she didn't. 

"Padme, I love you." It had never been harder to say it, it would never be any harder to say it. 

"I believe you." 

A pause- a guilty one. The spot where she'd been laying beside him had cooled completely. 

"I love you too, Ani." He'd never doubted that, it had always been understood. 

He said, "It was just a nightmare." 

They laid there, together but not touching, in the darkness for a long while. 

"Was it?" 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

She has that dream, and he has this dream, and when he wakes up the first question he asks is '*when* am I?', not 'where am I?'. 

__

Red crosses blue. Lightsabers, in the dark, in the chill wind of Bespin and he is hurting. 

(Damn it, what did you do to Leia to Han to Chewie to everyone I care for..) 

Cross, block, parry. He jumps to avoid the red blade, which is cold instead of hot. 

"Impressive... most impressive." 

The shadows are deep and thick, illuminated only by the glow of lightsabers. 

But he still sees her, the woman throwing herself desperately against the phantom cage. She is beautiful and kind and he does not know how he knows this. She is screaming 'no' without making a sound. 

A brief image from the enemy: 

"That could never happen, you know that." 

"I love you." 

"It was just a nightmare." 

The frightening thing is, Vader knows she's there too. 

Sometimes, he wakes, and Beru's soft, weathered hand is against his face. She holds up her free hand, spreads it wide. She says she has caught his bad dream, and that she will keep it for him until he gets older. 

Other times, he wakes, and Han's voice calls from the lower bunk, saying boy are you loud, kid, and maybe you should have a strong drink before you go to bed. 

Or Leia, who's voice is soft and quiet. During the war, she says there's no use having nightmares when you're going to wake up to one. Such a nice person shouldn't have bad dreams. 

Or else he's alone, and the lights of Coruscant are coming through the window. Artoo's low hum is what gets him back to sleep. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

The rented speeder lurched as it came over the last hill leading to Clockwork City. Luke's vision seemed to clear, and he mentally scolded himself for not focusing more clearly. He'd felt out of sorts all day, though-- he imagined Yoda would rap him with the grimmer stick had the old Master been present. 

"Well," Luke said to Artoo, "Even Obiwan had to have his off days, I'm sure." He ran a hand through his hair, "Maybe I should have listened to that clerk-- we'll never get back to Jaquerie before nightfall." 

Artoo whistled long and low. 

"Hopefully this will pay off," the Jedi returned. He sped up a little a pulled to a dare-devil turning stop as he reached the city's outer gate. The droid beeped indignantly, but Luke just grinned boyishly-- he missed racing. Securing the lock on the speeder, he lifted Artoo down to the cobble-stone walkway and turned towards the city. 

The first row of stalls in the market place turned up nothing but guarded eyes, and the brief mention that Widow Skywalker did some dressmaking for the locals. Luke fought down his frustration with this new bit-- he at least had a trade. Briefly, he remembered Leia saying that she was always much handier with a blaster than a needle, and that as a child, her fingers had been picked unto death. Leia and Mother, sitting somewhere under Alderaan's blue sky, Mother demonstrating stitches-- the image was surprisingly clear. 

"Artoo, I-- HEY!" Luke turned quickly, watching the stranger who'd bumped into him moments before. A young man, not much older than himself, trotted away with his brown cloak trailing behind. 

'Come on!' a voice seemed to say. Possessed with a sudden purpose, Luke followed, Artoo squawking in protest. He turned the corner, now following a young boy in desert grab (was this the same person?). Another corner, and back to the young man. 'Here!' 

"Can I help you?" 

" Pardon?" Luke, startled by the intensity of the 'vision', looked up suddenly. 

The woman running the fabrics stall looked a little perplexed, "Do you want to buy something?" She gestured to her wares with a broad, long fingered hand. 

Cautiously, Luke said, "Actually... I was wondering if you could answer a question for me." 

"Oh?" the woman's eyes seemed to slant, "Sure, kid, shoot-- but not literally." 

Luke allowed himself a laugh, before sobering quickly. 

"Do you know the Widow Skywalker?" 

========= 

Feedback? *hopeful* 


	4. And Hear My Mother Crying

Author's Notes: Thanks so much for sticking with this and putting up with me, guys! ^_^

Special Thanks to:

Amy Lee, GoldenRose, Miut, Culf, Beyond the Grey, Mags, Duo, Ms8309, Earthworm, Master Djo-Solo, Drama-princess, Nadra (& Nev), Amidalasky Snape, Typhaena, Anonymous, Ash Darklighter, t65flyer (gee you're familiar ^_~), Jedi 2-b, A. Windsor (you're a sweetheart, doll), Renee and Heidi M for the feedback. 

And now, without further ado.

===============================

The Widow Skywalker 3a/?

By Meredith Bronwen Mallory

mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com

http://www.demando.net

===============================

"Do you know the Widow Skywalker?"

So strange it was to say the name in connection with someone else. All his life, Luke had been the only Skywalker, a name somehow daring and flashy amidst the sand. 'Owen Lars' was a thick name, too heavy to rise off the ground, and 'Beru' was the native word for tourmaline, a precious green-pink stone. His Aunt was a lot like that, hidden away from prying eyes but still was something strange and wonderful glittering under the body she wore like an old, comfortable robe. Skywalker-- he remembered learning to write it in school, so long and hopelessly complicated. The word made him think of flying, as if he could walk off a cliff and just continue on his way as though there was a bridge beneath him and not just fickle, quicksilver air. 

"There is another Skywalker," Yoda had said, but Leia was an Organa-- memories of mother patched up with the kindness of her foster father. Anakin Skywalker was dead.

For a moment, the woman's eyes seemed to vanish, becoming instead two inverted black crescents, the wings of some bird of prey.

He started to say again, "Do you know the Widow-"

"I heard you the first time," she replied, not angry, just factual. She opened her eyes, which were yellow-green like a feline, or that monster in the cave you glimpse but never really see. She turned away from him only slightly, seating her lean form on a crate. "There's the well just down the way a bit," she said, gesturing towards a nerby jar with one long, claw-like parchment hand. Her eyes met his and her pupils seemed almost triangular, "Do a favor for a tired peddler?"

"Yes, Ma'am," Luke reached for the jar without thinking. She could get it very well by herself-- he knew, but this was an exchange. His un-needed kindness for her words. He tried and failed not to jog towards the well like an eager little boy; it seemed to him for a moment that he was back on Tatooine running small errands for Beru, always pretending he was a starship or a winged beast as he hurried over the dunes. Then, with his head bowed a little, he returned the jar to the woman's hands, watching as she noted his single, black-gloved hand with interest.

Wordlessly, she poured the water into two bowls that were only mildly clean and motioned for him to take a seat.

"I'm Deip," she muttered half into the water. Tipping the bowl to his lips, Luke tasted cool liquid and just a hint of coppery dirt.

"Luke," he said his first name and took a quick breath in, to force the family title back down his throat. Deip made the shape of his name with her lips, her eyes distant as if casting back, looking for information.

"Where you from?" She rested the dish in her lap.

"Tatooine."

Curt; "Never heard of it."

"It's on the outer rim." He asked with polite interest, "Where are you from?"

"Almak." Said with a quick, flick of the tongue that might be elegant on someone else. 

"Never heard of that, either," he said.

"It' on the outer rim," she raised an eyebrow, and they both laughed a little, pretending it was a joke. This time, they sipped in perfect unison, measuring each other. There was a long pause, in which the hum and jabber of the market place was almost unbearable. "There's a gate on the east side of the city."

He made no comment on this.

"Take that gate-- turn off the main road just after you reach the old plantation. It's just the foundation and the fence now." Deip paused for a breath, twining her finger in one of her thick, loose curls. "You'll go on the off road for a while, then you'll see a big farmhouse. Keep going. She lives up against the canyon... if you reach the dry lake bed, you've gone too far."

For a moment, Luke imagined Han was with him, straddling an vacant crate with all the lazy grace of a gundark-tamer. Han would say, "Honey," (Han called all women 'honey', but only Leia was 'sweetheart') "I've already gone too far."

"I'll remember," Luke said, smiling a little, "Turn after the old plantation, pass the farm, don't go beyond the dry lake bed." Deip nodded, accepting his faithful recitation. He took one last drink from the bowl, then bowed his head as he passed it to her, "Thank you for the water." He wondered if she knew how much that meant, to a person from the thirsty desert.

She stood as well, "I don't suppose you're gonna buy anything, are ya?"

He glanced at her wares without really looking, "No, thank you."

Deip snorted, wearing her annoyance like a crown, "Didn't your Mother ever tell you it's rude to window shop?"

"No," Luke said earnestly before turning his back, "she didn't."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - 

There was something he never told Leia; something he held from her and guarded with such carefulness that he was sometimes unsure whether he was keeping it from her or protecting her from it. There were things, too, that she owned and kept out of his reach-- she had, after all, served on the Senate and spoken with Vader on many occasions. Sometimes, there was a tinge to the way she regarded the Sith Lord, something that made her tilt her chin up and look down her nose, as if imagining her nemesis still stood before her. Remembered arguments? Subtle politics? He didn't know, had never seen Vader speak to her. 

Once, he'd been young (he wasn't young, not anymore-- it was strange how ageless he felt, like a relic) and filled with a sense of loss that sent him hurling towards Vader with his anger alive like vengeful justice. He had been able to see, so clearly, in his child-like imagination, the shadow of Vader betraying and murdering the bright, shining knight of his father. Stabbing him in the back.

(the thrice damned Sith wouldn't have been able to defeat Anakin Skywalker any other way, no sir)

Obiwan had told him just what he wanted to hear, something to counteract the resentful grunts of his uncle and the quiet, bird-like fear of his Aunt. He had lived in Beru's house and eaten her terror as surely as he cleared his plate of beans. 

And so, he'd been filled with his own righteousness 

(yes, I would have committed patricide without knowing, I'd look at my hands and never see the stains. Where is your honor, Kenobi? Dare you show it to me and let me see that it is not pristine, or do your lies not count?)

and when he sat watching the Princess who was not familiar enough with him to be Leia, and he'd seen the flash from her fitful sleep, well, he'd been ready bind her with his arms and promise he'd protect her from Vader as well. 

Her nightmare was a memory, which was really a memory of Vader's memory and now Luke's; a faded transmission, changed with each telling. 

__

A touch on Leia's cheek. 

Leather. Was it the machines under there that made it seem warm?

She was dressed in heavy gold and midnight, and had been turning like a perfect porcaline statuette with each noble that asked her to dance. She was thinking that she was not a real girl anymore, that her soul had gotten lost somewhere and how was she supposed to do any good when the world was so glittery and plastic and shallow? Stepping out into the night air, she bit her lip and tried to tell herself she'd forgotten how to cry just like how she'd forgotten to laugh and to have fun and *really* smile. 

Then...

A touch on Leia's cheek.

He was a death's head, the reaper who threshed the world into oblivion, and she could see her own wide brown eyes in his darker-than-dark mask. He drew a single finger along her flushed cheek, not straight down, but in a kind of curve. She was so afraid, and she was breathing in his rhythm. It was cold, and her parted lips made her breath into the little wings of ghosts. 

There was something under that terror, though, something under the muted... well, she was still very much a child and really had no words for the emotion she was gleaning from the Sith. Then, a bright and instant flash; an image (MOTHER) of a woman (MOTHER) so wonderful and beautiful and warm in Vader's memory that it HURT. Leia had staggered away from him, feeling dizzy because there was something in her mind that was not of her mind shutting down her thinking for protection. 

"Apologies, Princess," Leia's memory of Vader's voice was dim past the thundering *slam* of her mind closing in on itself. "You quite resemble someone I used to know."

And he never said anything about it after that.

Only no, Luke imagined, did they understand the true danger she had been in that day. Leia said it was a reflex, the shielding of her mind, and that years later on the Death Star she had used it survive. 

It helped that Vader had not been looking for a daughter, but a son.

One child.

(Who told him there was only ONE child? Who hid Leia right under Vader's nose? Was it you, Kenobi? Yoda? You taught me so much and told me so little. Or was it...?)

And it also helped that during that brief time Leia's mind touched that of her father's, Vader was too focused on his-- even the memory, transferred from Leia's mind to Luke's, could not accurately name the emotion-- his *need* for Padme, that he had not thought to probe the girl who's face inspired such turmoil. 

"So," he said to Artoo. The rented speeder raced along the worn road that was little more than a dip in the dirt; the wind took Luke's words and littered them all along the ground. He wasn't sure if the droid heard him, wasn't sure it mattered. He needed to hear his own voice and make himself real. "Here's my secret, Artoo. The thing I told Leia, maybe half because I wanted to keep it to myself and half because I really don't think she'd want to know anyway." It took him a moment to gather the images, they pressed between his fingers and became smaller. Ashes, ashes.

"I was trying not to hope for anything when turned myself over to Vader... to father," the word was strange on his tongue, still, "I almost believed he as just a hollow echo in that suit, not really Anakin Skywalker anymore, like Obiwan had said. Then," it was a statement, that one word. Artoo cooed lowly from his place secured in the back of the speeder; it was strange how there seemed to be sympathy in the modulated tones. The small craft slid over the breeze above the road, down a slope that revealed a rambling farm house and the sea of red-yellow fields stretching one way as the canyon rose another. Luke steered expertly towards the rocky formation, eyes scanning the horizon. Unconsciously, he flexed his mechanical hand, "I came to escort me from my cell to the shuttle, he was going to take me to the Emperor, turn me over-- I said something about Palpatine, probably one of those irreverent terms I picked up in the Rebellion, I really don't remember. Father pointed out that I and he and everyone in the galaxy were the Emperor's subjects. That the Republic the Rebellion was so fighting to reinstate was a dream, the real thing had only been chaos. He was trying to bait me, I think, just a little. I felt so strange, like I was hollow inside too. I always wondered how Leia was so passionate and yet to calm at the same time..." 

In the distance, he saw a structure built of rock just a little lighter than that of the canyon. It was a lopsided, small mud-brick building, huddled in the shade of a few spidery trees; the roof was scrap plank and thatch, and there was a little fence with bars and pieces that didn't match. Just beyond the building, he could see a few more closely gathered trees. There was a rustle in the golden leaves.

Or maybe it was just a trick of the setting sun.

Luke drew on the Force, felt it slide down his throat like cool water. "I said to Vader, to Father, that I was not and never would be the willing subject of a man who ruled only through terror and brutality. He stopped, right there in the hallway, so mechanically perfect. I think we were halfway to the shuttle, but he turned and really *looked* at me through that mask and said, 'You are your mother's son, as well as my own'. Just like that-- he turned, and I followed, and he never...."

_"Apologies, Princess. You quite resemble someone I used to know."_

And he never said anything about it after that.

Luke couldn't, wouldn't, didn't want to finish. The house was close now, but still a ways away; he pulled the speeder into a curve of the canyon and stopped it with a jerk, apologizing absently at Artoo's squeal. 

"Wait here, Artoo," he pressed his lips together, then vaulted over the side of the vehicile. He walked, measuring each step, up the worn dirt road that looked as if to had only known footsteps in the long years. The fading sun was warm and cold on his face at the same time.

He couldn't stop himself from running. 

============================================

(to the tune of "Jingle Bell Rock")

__

Feedback yeah, feedback yeah, feedback's my thing,

It makes me dance,

And it makes me sing,

A few words, a thousand, or a bunch in a row,

I just like to know,

'Cause it makes me glow,

Oh, yeah, feedback's my thing.


	5. Where is My Yesterday?

First of all, I have to thank you guys profusely for being so patient with dorky old me. You guys are waaaaayyy to nice, and I really appreciate it. *smacks a kiss on each and every reader's cheek, then passes out a ton of chocolate each* 

Due to fandom distractions, returning to college, computer trouble and Darth RL in general, I've been kind of blocked on this story. At a very critical point, I might add! I'm posting this only minutes after finishing it-- it's unbeta-ed, though it has been spell-checked. I figured you guys didn't want to wait any longer, and I'm afraid if I let this sit here I'll revise it to death. I really, truly and sincerely hope this doesn't suck. I was having so much trouble with this scene, and then all the sudden it transformed and jumped, in full form, into my brain. *shrugs* 

Thank you again for bothering to read this, 

Meredith 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

The Widow Skywalker 3b/?

by Meredith Bronwen Mallory

mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

At the gate, Luke stopped, his body stilling so instantly that for a moment his mind was surprised he had not leapt over the fence and continued his sprint. The wind was in his ears, long and low, the voice of a mythical Tatooine She-Bird dying on the sun baked rocks. For a moment so short and so long it shot through him, he was back on Bespin and the safe, happy story he'd always told himself about his parents was falling away, slipping through thick, black gloved fingers. 

**__**

(--_I_ am your father-- 

"My father wasn't a soldier, he was a navigator on a spice freighter." 

His eyes were blue, like mine, and Mother was a pretty outlander down on her luck. They met at a festival because his gaze followed her through out the fire-lit evening and she finally came and asked him if he wanted to dance... 

****

"That's what your Uncle wants you to believe." 

Mother was a thin, small shade of a woman, beautiful like a dragon's best egg, but she was sick when she bore me and the blood flowed out of her and over the sand like a twisted ocean. I was born out of death, that's why Uncle Owen disliked me in that quiet, sullen way; because I had stolen someone's life in order to have my own, even if I didn't mean to. Maybe Mother and Owen were friends-- yes, that must be why he loves me but his eyes are sometimes so cold. Father couldn't make it without Mom-- he left me in the circle of Aunt Beru's arms and then he got careless, got reckless, but he really did mean to come back and get me. He miscalculated, a fraction of a decimal of a parsec off and the ship didn't make it back and someone sent Uncle Owen the few things stored in Dad's locker at the station. That was it. It's all over now, just dust and bones under the sand and floating in space. The end, amen-- go to sleep now, Luke, and don't ask anymore questions. 

****

--Search your feelings--) 

He had known it to be true, that Vader was his father and everything he'd known until then had been smoke, mirrors and plays on words. In the endless tunnel of air and sound, he'd only been able to see that hand, stretching out, offering. Gifting-- the truth, from another point of view. 

And yet... 

He'd heard a voice then, not Yoda's, not Ben's but Beru's soft honey tones of careful warning. Don't take gifts from demons (from dark men with the face of death); earn what you want of them, pay for it, but don't take it as a gift. And he'd let go of the rail he'd been gripping so harshly, with the Force spilling up inside of him, passive and aggressive, all-mysterious and infinitely knowable all at once. He'd watched Vader became a small, black point of non-light high above. 

__

(**"Ben, why did you lie to me." **Not a question, an accusation. **"_BEN_~!**") 

And, in those endless white, sterile corridors of the command ship orbiting Sullust, he'd closed his eyes and felt he had nothing to hold onto. No real past-- the face of Uncle Owen was completely understandable in this new light, and Beru's face seemed to shift and change, become childless. The eternal present bore down on him until he felt Leia's hand slip into his own, cool and simply _there_. 

In his dreams, the blood ocean expelled from his mother changed, became endless and more wild. 

__

(What manner of woman, what order of creature, would... 

--marry 

--bare the son of 

--_love?_ 

such a monster?) 

Leia's anger towards Vader, towards Father, was twofold; the harm he'd done to her and millions, in its own way so personal and deeply cut. Luke had known that all along, had understood it and felt it sometimes in himself. For the first time, though, he understood the other edge of the sword Leia wielded so carefully against the rest of the world. 

In those dreams and pieces of memories they'd exchanged, Mother was bright and good and kind. 

Father was tainted. 

Dark touches light, light becomes shade, becomes shadow, becomes like unto the darkness itself and... 

__

(What manner of woman...) 

But She _was_ good and kind-- it was something so true it could not even be fathomed to question it. It was in Leia's dreams, as real and solid as rubies in your hands. Looks like blood, shimmering-- but something more precious. 

Feeling the Force around him, in the spinster-like trees, in the tall copper grass and in the red light on the horizon, Luke felt his fear fall over him and pass through him. A distant echo-- and he put out his hand. 

The gate was tied haphazardly with twine but, before Luke's fingers could brush against it, the string fell away and the breeze seemed alive as it pushed the barrier aside. A child's laugh, yet deep like a man's, seemed to brush up against Luke like the wind; he hadn't felt that presence so keenly even on Endor, and it seemed strong and vibrant now. 

(Go see your Mother, Luke.) 

The sunset passed easily through the open windows and doors of the hut-- Luke found himself in it's single, small room, gazing at the threshold leading out to the other side. Through the doorway, he could see a makeshift garden, where the weeds grew with the crops because they, too, had their uses. In the corner of the room, there was a large, curved white basin, and some ways away from that a fire pit cut carefully into the floor. Other than the trunk sitting against the opposite wall, the only adornment Luke could see were three dresses, hanging faded and sullen from nails. 

"Hello?" he began, hesitant to break the quiet saturating the stone foundation. Taking a step forward, he felt his breath still and wither away in his throat. A figure moved into the doorway, for a moment a mere outline backlit by the fading crimson sun, and then-- 

She looked like Leia, but the resemblance washed away with one quick gaze and this woman became her own person, unique and carefully detailed. Her face was round like the white moons over Hoth, skin pale and her eyes a deep, mysterious every-color that faintly pretended to be amethyst or brown. Her hair seemed to shift about her with a life of its own, a heady deep color. Briefly, he saw her faded robes and the harvest of fruit she held against her chest, but his eyes were drawn back with eerie want to her eyes and her hesitant, welcoming smile. He could see behind her glass-mask face (so like Leia again!) that she was seeing both him and another time, and her bones where shaking in motionlessness beneath the wrappings of her skin. 

"Hello," she returned, her grip on the wide basket of fruits tightening noticeably. She watched him so carefully, like a bird you reach out to be startle accidentally. 

"Are you--" he stopped, because he could see a flicker in her expression. The lines of her face and the curves of her cheekbones were shapes from his baby dreams, but she seemed ageless. "Are you the Widow Skywalker?" 

Briefly, the woman caught her lower lip against her teeth, "Yes, I am." 

Luke had told himself, ever since he'd heard that name spoken in the market place at Jaquirie, that he expected nothing. A dead end, a phantom, a dream, loving arms, or a bitter old woman to run him out of his desperate gripping at the past-- he couldn't know, could never really know because his memories were deep and infant-colored. He only had Leia's rememberings to go by-- don't get your hopes up, don't anticipate anything. Desert wisdom, don't let yourself get disappointed. 

If he had, somewhere between his ribs, conjured a childhood image, this woman was and wasn't everything he'd imagined. She defied simple definition-- where Beru's mystery had been deeply buried as moisture on the farm, hers permeated the world around her-- she held herself like no peasant or lord he'd ever seen. She was Mother, and it surprised him that he knew it so deeply, so quickly and with such certainty. The knowledge of Vader had been terrible and inescapable-- this was different, but somehow just as _true_. 

"I'm Luke Skywalker," he didn't blurt it, the words simply said themselves in a calm, ordered voice. With a sudden, real feeling of panic, he wished to take them back and choke them down, because her expression was unreadable but somehow sad. Honestly, boyishly, he said-- "I'm not sure what I expected, telling you that straight off."

"You're a ghost," she drew the words up through her body with her breath, "you must be, oh--" he'd never heard anyone say that simple syllable with such fervor, "tell me your name _again_." 

"Luke Skywalker," he said, wanting to reach out to her. "I heard your name in the market, and I thought--- Skywalker, I mean, and... if you don't believe me, Leia..." 

"Leia?" she seized on that name too, her hands releasing the basket and letting it fall away without thought, "By the Force." An old oath, sworn and meant, and she crossed the floor, stood before him and raised a trembling hand to his temple. "I have to believe you-- there's no way I couldn't... but," her eyes darted, very briefly, away before coming to gaze at him once more, "I haven't seen my son since he was two months old." 

He almost echoed her words in disbelief-- two months!?-- but bit them back as a wave of understanding crossed him. Leia, five and weeping in her dreams-- the sorrow was in her voice as she told him, "she died when I was very young, she must have. One day she was gone, and no one would speak of her... on Alderaan, the dead are secret and sacred." 

Everything, everything was from a certain point of view. Father _was_ a pilot, a Jedi, Obiwan's apprentice cut down by Vader, but also Vader himself. Machine and man, Anakin and Sith Lord, blessed, damned and everything in between. Who then, was this woman who touched him with hands that must only remember the soft flesh of a baby boy and a warm presence curled against her breast? 

"Leia thinks you died," he said, merely for the comfort of saying something. 

Simply, "I did. We all die-- little deaths." There came a laugh then, sweet and strangely stark, "Sometimes I think the big one is just a formality." Mother took a breath, "She's alive then, Leia? And you know that she's..." 

"My sister," the words were still new and filled with pride on Luke's tongue, "Yes. She's on Coruscant, trying to set up a transition government. I can't say I envy her the job." 

With a faded hoped, "Then the Emperor is really dead?" 

Luke merely nodded, watching as she turned away and drew her thin arms around herself. He reached out to her, came behind her and put a hand on each of her arms. 

"How funny, how strange," she said softly, "after all these years... and I'm not sure how I feel, knowing he's really dead. Happy-- relieved-- like my vengeance has been sated?" 

"He wasn't really like a person," Luke said, marveling at how easy and yet difficult it was to simply talk to her. Easy-- relation, love, simple and unexpected; hard, for every one of the years lapping between them like a dark void. 

**__**

("She was very beautiful, but somehow sad." 

"Pardon me, Princess. You quite remind me of someone I used to know..." 

"You know it to be true".) 

"He ruled everything so harshly, I still have trouble believing we're free," the Jedi continued, though he felt a shift in his mother's body language, "but we are. I was there." Her hand came up to touch his mechanical hand. On the ship, with the nebula blooming outside the wide window, One-Two-Bee and then Leia had assured him the replacement was almost indistinguishable from the real thing, unless one had training in mechanics. The synthetic flesh was self-warming, and the metal joints shaped like the bones they substituted, and yet... 

She knew. 

"They make these things so well, these days," she said, turning his palm over in her own, fingers trailing along the shapes of his palm. It came to him that she loved him without knowing which side of that spinning, endless coin he had landed on, dark or light. And then, too, he remembered a fairy song-- not one from Tatooine, but from some ocean world were the Rebellion had camped-- 

__

(... there was dark and then there was light, but there was no line in between...) 

"Vader is dead, as well," Luke swallowed, trying to read the words etched on the double black moons of her eyes. 

"I know." Deftly, she raised her free hand and drew down the sleeve, so that he would see the raised, lace shambles of flesh that scarred down her lower arm. "I felt it go right through me-- didn't know where I was, for a while, leaning over the fire. I could _feel_ anything, even the burns. It surprised me to, find them after everything cleared." She took both of his hands in her own, "You know, don't you?" 

"I never can tell," Luke smiled weakly, "I think I know things and then they change." With a childlike intensity, "What's your name?" 

"My given name is Padme Naberrie," it rolled off her tongue, foreign flower-scent. "My reign name was Amidala, my married name-- which no one ever used-- was Skywalker, and in the prison they called me Lady..." 

"Vader," Luke finished, and the word was heavy. "Yes, then. I do know-- he told me." 

"He--" Padme began, then shook her head. "Where do we start?" Then, in one fluid motion, she embraced him and her tears were hot but cool like rain against his neck. "My son," she said, "I used to tell myself you were dead, just so I could stop hurting, wondering... I never knew what became of you, never was able to see to your protection like Leia. I don't really _know_ you... and you, what must you think of me?" 

"I think," said Luke with only a moment's pause, "that I was never so lucky as to hear your name in the market place." He held onto her, feeling the interstice strength in her seemingly fragile bones. Reluctantly, he allowed her to draw away, and by some unspoken agreement they both bent to retrieve the basket and fruit that had scattered haphazardly on the floor. 

"Are you hungry?" Padme asked with an almost commanding gentleness, "I was just about to have last meal." 

"Actually, yes." Luke nodded, dropping the last of the pink-green orbs into the basket. "I've been rather jumpy as of late." 

"I can't imagine..." Padme shook her head, hair like a mystic's veil, "But how many Skywalkers can there be in one galaxy?" Again, she smiled with a hesitant, bitter joy, "A handful are dangerous enough as it is." She moved to the fire pit, cracking a hardened seed against the side and letting the liquid pour onto the straw until it leapt into red-yellow fingers of flame. He watched her fetch water from a jar hidden behind the trunk, then helped her settle it properly for cooking, mimicking her movements and she peeled the fruit. 

"Where _do_ we start?" he asked suddenly, wanting to devour knowledge more than the sweet scent of fruit-meat that teased his nose. 

"Maybe," Padme began cautiously, "You can tell me where you grew up?" 

"Tatooine," he remarked without thinking, watching the fire throw an odd sort of dread against the blush of her cheeks. "Didn't you know?" 

"No--," his Mother said mournfully, the next word said with fondness but like a curse, "Obiwan..." 

Luke turned swiftly as he heard a clicking against the simple stone walkway, his body relaxing when Artoo's squat form rolled through the doorway. The droid made a few squawks, as if in reprimand for being left outside so long, but then it's beeping turned to modulated coos. Padme's beautiful, endless smile showed on her face once more as she reached out to trace the symbols embedded just bellow Artoo's small dome. 

"Artoo Detoo," she said, shaking her head, disbelief trailing in her long hair. At Luke's surprised expression, she tilted her head back and laughed, a giggle, a tinkle of pure delight. Looping an arm around her son, she leaned in, her hand coming to touch on the hilt of his lightsaber tucked at his side. "A Jedi," she said with pride a just a hint of regret. "There's something I bet they never told you... a very big secret I'm just now starting to learn. Two, actually." 

"And what is that?" he grinned up, feeling like a child getting ready for a story. 

"One-- you get back what you give away," and then Padme's grin became innocently mischievous, "and-- The Universe's harsh exterior hides beauty and a somewhat perverse sense of humor." 

= = = = = = = = = = = 

And now, the feedback song. 

[to the tune of "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer"] 

__

"Meredith has finally posted more of this fic, 

an occurrence that causes some dis-be-lief, 

And now she will love you for-ever, 

if any feedback you would choose to leave." 


	6. Traps of Time

Don't faint or anything. This is an ACTUAL POST. As in, more of the story. confused look I know! I can't believe it either, but there it is.

I have to thank each and every one of you for your patience with me. I'm terribly slow, and my muse is known to be fickle, but you guys have hung in there. You're all absolutely awesome!

Thanks, as always, go to my beta, the adorable LeiaN, and to my Leigh-darling, who keeps me in line and only lets me raid the liquor cabinet for medicinal purposes.

That said, I'll shut up and let you read the post.

_ ****_

The Widow Skywalker 4a/?

by Meredith Bronwen

Padme sat on her knees, staring into the small hearth fire; into the center of the flames, where blue became white and white became all colors, as well as the absence of. Luke's gaze was on her, not heavy, but a gentle, furtive thing, calling awareness like a breeze. 'My son!' she thought, turning the words over in her mind, feeling them clamor against her vocal chords. Just minutes ago he had stood in her doorway, the past made flesh; he had embraced her and asked for her name. Tears were still streaming down her face, slow and heated-- she did not bother to wipe them away, or pay them any heed at all. Such a shyness in his eyes, as he'd helped her gather the fallen harvest and, as he'd turned to find the scattered fruits, the sun had throw shadows that seemed to make time immaterial. There was a laughter in her-- sobs, as well, and she was afraid to release either. On Naboo, mothers gave their infants nursing names like 'little bird' or 'grass cat', lest the jealous, self-devouring goddess be tempted to snatch the child back.

Biting her lip, Padme met those blue eyes. Their color was so like Anakin's and yet, there was an air of age in Luke's depths that his father had seemed to shun. She wondered at those slim, young shoulders, at the careful poise in his demeanor. In another moment, he smiled, and there was a pain in her heart. Anakin's face had always been transformed by his endearing grin, but he had remarked the same thing of her. With his hand gently tracing the line of her jaw, he'd brushed her hair back against her veil and said that he far preferred her smile to the solemn bride; someone girlish, someone just as nervous as he. She reached out, gently touching Luke's hand, before she turned back to her cooking. The act was as much for her comfort as it was for his; there were so many shadows-- she could see in his eyes that he knew it too!-- that it was sometimes hard to believe that they had not simply, at last, taken on flesh and form. As she reached for the bowl of oshiibara, he handed it too her helpfully, with just a little color in his cheeks. Artoo rocked a little nearby, beeping softly, fire turning the silver reflection of his dome to copper.

"You are good luck," she said to the little droid.

"He saved my life," Luke offered, adding sheepishly, "more than once." He looked down at his gloved hand briefly, rubbing the fingers together, features obscured by the mist of his thoughts. Padme studied him openly, before moving a little closer to him, placing a hand on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry," she said, feeling as if those words were cracking, breaking under the weight of all they were trying to hold. "Oh, Luke." His eyes were unguarded when he raised them to hers. He was so much more than simply Anakin's son, so much more than a young man.

"I was afraid to even think about having a mother, when I was a little boy," he said quietly. Gently, she touched the burnt-sand locks at the base of his neck, to ease the passage of the words. "I just... from the way Uncle Owen reacted when I asked about my father, I guess I was just afraid. If I said nothing... if I asked nothing, you could be everywhere. You could be out there, looking for me."

"I had to make myself not think of you." The blur of her tears made the world a melting landscape, but she felt that she could still see him. "No one could know you were mine. And when you were gone..." Helplessly, she moved her hands, as if to try and sort out the pieces. Taking a breath, she took one of the lopsided bulbs of oshiibara into her hands. The peeling was instinctual and comforting; the layers of her heart were not so easily pierced. It was as if her internal landscape had been utterly changed by some cataclysm; in the wasteland, there were no landmarks, and even half-familiar lines seemed unbearably changed. "I couldn't look for you. Keeping you and Leia safe was the most important thing."

Carefully, Luke took one of the meaty bulbs into his own hands, mimicking her as she peeled. Even that small thing brought tiny needles to congregate in her throat; the image of a small boy, in another woman's kitchen, standing on his tiptoes for a taste. His eyes flashed with a strange sympathy, "There are so many questions. I used to be so angry, because I wasn't allowed to ask questions. Now I find that ever answer I get only leads to ten more."

"Obiwan took you to Tatooine," Padme said, as if committing the words to some inner monologue, some long oral tradition that apprentices learned, painstakingly, around the fire. At the small start the rippled through his body, she said simply, "He thought it would be best if I didn't know where you were at all. That way, I could never be made to betray you--"

"You never betrayed Leia," Luke said with a sudden intensity. He looked out, through the clay threshold and into the violet Koe night, as if expecting someone. "I was so in awe of Ben..." he shook his head, "of Obiwan, when I first met him. He offered everything I'd always longed for. Answers, purpose, a chance to get off that dustball." His smile, while not bitter, but lacked nostalgia. It was, instead, full of a strange, half-born resentment towards a young boy who didn't not know how rich he was. "He lied to me-- and he never even admitted it! He just said that it was the truth, from--"

"From a certain point of view," Padme finished, turning away to fetch some water. "It's convenient, isn't it?" She dipped the ladle into deep jar, quick to disturb any smoothing of the surface. Luke watched her; a creature of brilliance that moved easily in the shadows, as if they heeded some command that they could not touch her. "I can't judge him, as much as I might be tempted to. We none of us have much to be proud of, from back then." Returning with the bowl, she dumped the peeled bulbs into the water, watching as they began to simmer. Silence stretched between them, full of different threads, of a knowledge that things could as easily come undone as they could be woven together.

Gracefully, Padme sat back, drawing her knees close, continuing the soft, tentative story. "He took you to Tatooine, and left you with Owen and Beru Lars."

Luke nodded slowly, "You knew them." Not a question.

"Not too well," Padme admitted. "Owen is..." she searched his face, and at last cupped his cheek. "Was," she corrected, compassion in each changing shade of her eyes, "your father's stepbrother. I knew Beru when they were just engaged. She was a kind woman. A good woman." Luke looked away, but she gently directed his gaze back to her own eyes. Even after Anakin had turned, Padme had recognized the valleys and canyons behind his eyes. Her son's gaze held unknown territory, full of strange and heavy roads. She felt overwhelmed; she would never know all the things that had happened between her bright, hope-filled child and this strong, sorrowful young man. "Luke," she said earnestly, "you were the son Beru could not have. You were what she wanted, so desperately. I know this, I can assure you of this. She loved you."

"It's my fault," he said in a broken whisper, "if I'd been there... Ben-- Obiwan, said I only would have been killed with them, but somehow, I've always felt..." He leaned into her touch, "It was all so pointless. They didn't even know they had something they weren't supposed to." He nodded vaguely towards Artoo. Now they sat, shoulder to shoulder, in the dimly lit room. The few, iridescent night-birds of Koe flickering out against the deepening sky, throwing brief shapes through the window.

"If anyone should have been given charge of you, it was Beru." The pot over the fire hissed, and she moved forward, briefly, to stir the contents. "Obiwan got that right, at least."

"I did ask her about you, once. She just said that the spirits are eager to take the kind and gentle into their ranks. Owen-- didn't say anything." He paused, perhaps meaning to spare her, but she knew the rest of the old saying. 'The devils in the deeps like the meat on their bones to be old and spoiling. They bide their time.' 

"Your uncle had good reason to be so dour," she sighed softly, "he was trying to protect you, in his own way. He and Anakin were... well, to say they were dissimilar would be a vast understatement." Luke laughed, just a huff, and very soft.

At last, the pot began to boil precariously, and Padme draped two old rags over her hands, removing it from the hearth. She had to hunt around a little for an extra dish, and she ladled out a portion for each of them. Luke ate hungrily, a little embarrassed, but earnestly complimenting the taste.

"Oshiibara is a very useful crop," Padme said, laughing softly when Artoo began to clean up, moving his small claw carefully in the limited space. "You can eat it raw or cook it at least twenty different ways. It's slow to rot, the taste doesn't get old, and it's easy to grow."

"Have you been here all this time?" Luke asked, looking down. She sensed a carefulness in his expression, and realized he did not want her to think he was demanding an explanation.

"For eight years," she murmured, after a moments thought. "Before that, there was the prison, and..." Even after all this time, it was difficult for her to think of it in passing-- there were pains and images and tears so deeply imbedded in the very word that it seemed to roll over her, like a strong storm wave. "Well," she managed with dignity, "the last time I saw Leia was when she was five." Leaning forward a little, she asked, "How did you know, Luke? How did you find each other?"

"By accident," Luke made a motion with his real hand, "just like this. Obiwan must have known, but he never said anything... she was a girl I met. A princess I rescued--" he grinned, "er, she sort of rescued herself, though. And then, after a while, she was the best friend I ever had." His look was fond, focused on something in the past. "Somehow, I always knew."

"You were so close, even as infants," Padme took his empty plate, setting it aside to be washed. "I always had to pick both of you up. Always poking each other, just as apt to put the others hand in your mouth as you were your own." Her eyes darkened, lashes obscuring them, "She screamed so, when you were gone. She knew what had been taken from her." There was a wonder on Luke's face, and Padme imagined that it was a reflection of that very first time he'd thought, 'I have a sister.' He looked at her, and Padme has to force herself to meet steady consideration; she did not feel worthy of such gratitude or amazement.

"You're really here," he said finally.

She swallowed hard, "Yes." Taking him into her arms, she pressed her nose into his fine hair. He tightened his arms around her, and she felt rather than heard his sob, careful sobs. "My son," she murmured, rocking him gently, "oh, Force, what have I done, to be granted such a boon?"

Late in the moonless Koe night, Luke lay on his bedroll, gazing past the fire towards the silhouette of his mother, sleeping in the curved basin that served as her bed. Even in the dim light, he could see the rise and fall of her chest under the faded quilts, could see the way Artoo flickered his faint blue light over each of them in turn, as if trying to keep watch. They had spoken long hours, pausing to bank the fire, or to stir in their own silences, waiting for words to come. Finally, they had conceded to the far-off chime of Clockwork City's lone tower. He could still feel the soft press of her lips on his cheek-- could imagine their fellows from his babyhood lingering there, unseen. Sleep clamored over him, loosening his limbs, but he fought it, drawing on the force. After Bespin, he'd fought the land of dreams with a manic determination; each night was full of shapes he did not want to see, words he could not deny. Sometimes, he felt his own internal wanderings touch upon Vader's. Upon father's.

(Confusing images, lines of blood, all wrong. A man's voice, shouting the name his father had once borne, crying 'No!'. Triple moons, wavering, sinking in a sea of red sand. The sound of a lightsaber, slicing through cloth and flesh. Or else darkening shades shades, terrible blues, covering the once-bright fields of a verdant land. A woman crying, reaching out a window... Fire and death and bones made of coal. Oh, if she even lived now, she would spurn you, you are a monster, you shall never join her so live as long as you can...)

Propping his chin in his hand, Luke traced the form of his mother with his eyes, feeling true fear for the first time since the Emperor's bones had finally dissolved and burnt with energy. He understood, for the first time, the fierce protectiveness that flared in Leia's eyes when they spoke of mother. Why, when the subject turned to Father, she always seemed to be standing between the specter of Vader and someone else. He didn't have all the answers-- he and Mother had traded small snippets, but refrained from approaching larger subjects, in unspoken deference to Leia's absence. He could feel the lack keenly-- wishing she was as near to him as she was on Coruscant, so he could knock gently on her door and whisper that maybe, a little, he understood.

(She was kind, beautiful... but somehow sad.)

There was a child's resentment, irrational and impotent, towards that which had caused her sadness.

Each answer birthed questions, tens upon tens, until the world was filled with tangled constructions, as alien to the mind as a spider's web.

Luke slept-- awakening only once, just as the sky began blushing back to deep red. For a moment, he lay staring at the ceiling, wondering what had disturbed his senses. The Force rippled strangely, and Mother stirred in her sleep, loosing a small sound of distress.

He rolled over just in time to see one of the quilts move, as if on its own, to cover her shivering form.


	7. More Than the Visible World

NOTES: Wow.... It's only taken me a little over a week to produce this post. I must be sick, or something. As always, I thank you guys for your feedback and your time. I know a lot of people have tons of work or traveling to do right before Thanksgiving. Please look after yourselves and take care. And jar-jar voice ifen things be getting to crunch time, just be grabb'n a Jedi /jar-jar voice.

Thanks, as always, go to Miss LeiaN, for her incomparable services as a beta and Chief Poker Of the Muse. If I could trouble you guys to post a comment after you read, I'd be ever in your debt.

The Widow Skywalker 4b/?

by Meredith Bronwen Mallory

Padmé was slow to wake but swift to rise, once she'd pierced the final veil. Consciousness was like breathing; you never realized how effortless it was until you broke the surface of the water, greedy for air. Through the window, she could see the riotous colors of the Koe sunrise, shades and hues which did not readily ascribe to names. For a moment she stretched, an inventory of her body, before she swung her legs over the side of the basin and stood, barefoot, in the center of her home. From the corner, Artoo beeped softly and, despite herself, Padmé started. She smiled vaguely towards his squat form, crossing the room so that she could stand over the sleeping form of her son. There was something covert about it-- she had no idea what she would say, should he wake and find her looming like some creature in from the bramble and the woods. She couldn't help herself, though; she studied his face, lax and unguarded, with only a half-formed thought of what she was looking for.

In her own dreams, she was always roaming endless, echoing corridors, uncertain if she was chasing the shadows, or running from them. As open as her son's face was, she could divine nothing from it-- he was still in sleep, quiet, controlled. Kneeling beside his bedroll, she gently brushed a lock of tarnished blond hair from his face. The ghosts of her baby boy revealed themselves in his adult features, faint but true. There was regret in her, yet it felt somehow selfish, as if souring on the back of her tongue. 'Things,' Nubian farmers were fond of saying, 'could always be worse'. She smiled lightly, thinking of those green hills, flooding every five years despite their height. Silent, half-sullen determination was etched in the bones of every baby born on those slopes; plodding, continuing, rising each morning with the vague thought, 'if not today, or tomorrow, then someday...'

Biting her lip, Padmé rose, letting her eyes linger on Luke for a moment, before she quietly took a fold of clean clothing and small, rickety comb from the truck. She motioned to Artoo for silence as she slipped out the threshold and into the dooryard, where her crops grew with some inherent wildness, despite their well-ordered rows. In the shade of the lone, white-wood tree that shaded the side of her dwelling, she drew her hair forward, running the comb through it with exacting patience. The motion was repetitive, soothing. The locks that slipped through her fingers faded from dark brown to light, shot through with tinges of gray and white, like the creeping fingers of age. As last, she tossed her head a bit, pulling binding her hair up with a piece of twine. She pulled a rag down from one of the branches, bending to scoop the leaves from the surface of the water-barrel. Stripping her dirty dress from her form, she began to clean her body, vaguely cataloguing scars and signs of time. It had been many years since she'd seen her own reflection, and somehow this small vanity-- the notations of her physical body-- seemed somehow amusing. Along her spine and back were the familiar, raised lines and welts of the lash; her hands worn with labor, her left side marked with the fading remnants of a glancing blaster wound. On her lower arm, the newer, rambling burns acquired from the shock of Anakin's death. She traced these gently with her free fingers, almost marveling. His call to her, his low death-cry, had reached her from so far, like a resonating wave.

For so long, she had made herself believe all those tiny fictions she had built up. He was dead, he cared no more, he was captured, missing, hovering somewhere... All of them contradictory, but all of them believed, pulled to her when she needed them. 'When a star explodes,' she thought quietly, 'the whole galaxy feels it.' Even if it was a tiny point of light vanishing, thousands of years later, from the sky. It was the immediacy of the feeling, the intensity, that shook her. That he had been reaching for her, as if expecting her down one road and then glancing her form, too far to turn back, down another. His touch had been as intense as it was brief; like fingers simply lacking the strength, but not the determination, to hold on. Then it faded, and she found she had burned her supper. In the weeks since, she felt his growing presence much the way leaves felt the rain; something natural, and half expected. She had often thought she'd glimpsed him, a reflection of a reflection, out of the corner of her eye. His shadow accompanying her own.

Taking a handful of water from the barrel, she sipped, then spit it back over her shoulder. A prison habit, rude and calculated; in the showers, they had all done it, female prisoners, deliberately crude. Bodies bared under the eyes of soldiers and the lukewarm spray, how could they not? Some small defiance, an unattractiveness, seemed to salvage their dignity, make the blank-eyed troopers turn their heads away in half-remembered embarrassment. The years had taught Padmé a sort of indifference to her body; it was a cage, a final vessel for the soul. It was where clothing ended, and real self-deception began. Finally, Padmé hung the rag back in its place and stepped into her fresh dress, welcoming the feel of fabric against her arms. Mornings in this season were a chill that faded into the midday heat, but there was something strengthening in the cool, like monks who get up early in the morning to pray. She was reaching around to do up the simple hook-buttons at the back when, as simply as surfacing from the sea, another image took the fore of her vision.

__

(Herself, younger, hand caught in Anakin's as she went to make this same motion. He put his arm around her as he did up the complex lacings of her bodice, tracing where the blue satin hugged her figure. He liked to stand like that, behind her, encircling her, whispering secrets in her ear.)

The image was not her own.

Suddenly, she understood just what people meant when they said, 'harden your heart'. It wasn't a malicious act-- but one of self protection, the baking of clay brick in the sun. Fortification. The world always seemed a much safer place from behind a well. Padmé let out a deep breath, her only outward sign of discomfort the stiffening of her spine.

"That," she said softly, trying to keep her soul out of her throat, "would be a dirty trick." Her fingers ceased their motions; she was absurdly thankful when the buttons did not do themselves.

'I'm sorry.' It was a voice, but also not a voice. It had shape and form, and no substance at all-- it reached from the past, reminding Padmé that time was not linear, but that you always fell back to certain places. Anakin's voice. 'I didn't intend for you to hear... to 'see' that.' There was a long silence, in which she could only hear the rustling of the leaves. 'Padmé...'

She fisted her hands in her skirt, and did not turn around. "It's never a good sign to find yourself conversing with the dead." She braced herself against the water-barrel, making sure to disturb the water. And, because the only way to stop the word was to stop breathing altogether; "Anakin."

"When I tell you that I didn't know, will you believe me?" There was no sound, but she somehow sensed that he had moved closer. "I thought you were dead-- I searched... Force, Padmé, I would _never_ have..."

"Lying is not among your vices," she observed, careful about how the words played across her vocal chords. "There came a time when I realized that pri-- what I suffered-- was not at your hand." He said nothing, and the word 'directly' remained unspoken. Padmé had the sudden, bizarre image of her primary school teacher in the city, advising the children to be careful with their qualifiers. The intricacies of language.

"I should have searched harder, I should have found you," his voice was firm, as it always was on things he considered implicitly true.

"And then what, Ani?" Familiarity leapt unbidden to her lips, but there was no denying it; they had lodged pieces of themselves in each other, far too complex for battlefield surgery. "I'll have to live with this outcome-- there are too many other, more dangerous ones that could have been."

"Padmé, please," the sorrow in his voice was so real, winding between her ribs. "Turn around."

"I can't," she said, tone just as raw. "Not yet. I do--" she struggled with the word, simply because she had once thought she'd never say it again-- "love you, but..."

"So many things have changed," he seemed somewhat defeated, if only for a moment. "He saved me, you know." She could just imagine Anakin's stance, the brief nod of his head towards the room where Luke slept. "He's so like you... he never gave up."

Padmé smiled, though a few tears dropped to make ripples in the water's surface. "I don't know how I could have raised him, without always seeing you. I don't know... I'm afraid to really touch him. So much has come apart in my hands."

"He loves you," Anakin's voice was firm, "he always has, even if he can't reach you in waking memory." There was a pause, and Padmé found herself looking down at the faint, luminous outline of her husband's hand, covering her own. Cold, she would have expected, but the feeling was nothing like that; it was almost anti-sensation, as if his touch was teasing her senses to some level they were not yet prepared for. Quietly, like a secret, "_I_ love you."

He lingered, briefly; she felt his absence like air rushing in to fill a vacuum.

Shaking just a little, she finished buttoning her dress, stopping near the door to pick some ripe riango for breakfast. Luke was just sitting up as she came in, looking at the floor as his cheeks pinked.

"I guess I've gotten used to sleeping in," he said. She touched his shoulder reassuringly as she passed, accepting his help as she set to cutting the fruit for a small breakfast. She felt the silence within herself, all the things she wanted to say laying inert, without words. They sat together on the swept dirt floor; all the questions, the ones she wasn't ready to answer-- or even sure how to-- clustered about, laying in wait.

In the end, the question he asked was, to her, not a question at all. His voice trembled so slightly that Padmé imagined very few would have noticed, and for a moment all she could see was that small form, wrapped in her own crimson robe, whispering, 'I care for you, too, only I...'

"You will," Luke said softly, "you will come back to Coruscant with me?"

Touched forever by the merciless winds of Bespin, Luke had often been woken by the dull ache of his mechanical hand; a phantom red pulse, invading his dreams. He'd learned early on to ignore it, or focus on making it fade, so that now it was automatic and without thought. Rolling over on his side, he stared at the black glove, how it hugged something that so skillfully mimicked a human hand. Most people didn't even notice-- even if he only wore one glove, they assumed he simply had a scar. 'A red banner,' the young rebels called it-- a medal of honor earned in battle permanent and lasting. The locker rooms aboard ships and deep within bases were always rowdy; 'I got _this_ one dodging Stormtrooper fire on Malestare', 'That's nothing, _this_ is from our charge on the walkers on Hoth...'

Luke shivered slightly, and flexed the steel joints, feeling them ripple under the synthetic skin. His hand had ached, too, when Father's mind sought him out, touched on the edges of his own presence within the Force. There were days he tried not to look at it, so well did it conjure the image of Father's black, smoking wires.

__

('An eye for an eye,' said the thugs on the streets of Mos Eisley. 'An eye for an eye.')

Frustrated, Luke laid on his bedroll, staring at the ceiling and trying to quiet his mind. Unbidden, Mother's words came to him, distant with memory, absent of judgment, 'They make these things so well these days.' Somehow, she had not been afraid.

He became aware of Mother's soft footfalls and sat up, watching her come in from the bright ruby morning. Each time his gaze touched her face, it seemed to Luke that he saw something new revealed, only to find this revelation a mystery, still.

"I guess I've gotten used to sleeping in," he said, rolling his shoulders the way he once had, scooting into Aunt Beru's kitchen long after the first toll of the bell. Mother smiled reassuringly, and he moved to help her with the dicing of the oddly shaped, yellowing red fruit. The smell that reached his nose was almost sweet, and he took in her profile from the corner of his eye. Dressed in a faded tunic that looked as if it had once been pink, hair piled back and caught up with twine, she looked like a nomad queen. She wasn't from Tatooine, he knew-- her features were too delicate, despite her strength; there was an air about her that spoke to him of flowers in full bloom, moons on the water. And still, there was a learned ruggedness to her, like a transplanted vine, struggling, emerging hardy. He tried to imagine her on Alderaan-- whose landscapes he had only seen in Leia's careful holo preservations-- walking along the beach, or sitting in Leia's apartment on Coruscant. It came to him, suddenly, that he was afraid she would leave-- even moisture farmers refused to put down deep roots, knowing that any day the small yield of water might fail, pushing them over the next dune.

"You will," he said, quite startled by the words as they left his own mouth, "you will come back to Coruscant with me?" The words hung in the air, somewhere between a statement, a question and a plea. The sands of his childhood were full of the whispers; 'assume nothing'.

Mother looked up swiftly, smile so real that Luke ached with sympathy. And yet, there was something--

__

(the image, brief, of hands carrying a red cloak, of small shoulders, the feel of something smooth. a boy's voice. he couldn't make out the words.)

--elusive, gone like an angle of light.

"Of course," she said, reaching up to touch his cheek. Then, just as tenderly, she looked away. More quietly, "Back to Coruscant..."

__

(The tilt of the world jarring; smoke and thunder and the smell of burning flesh. 'I shouldn't have come back...')

Mother was watching him; Luke found himself flustered, uncertain as to how to apologize. Only Leia had been able to 'catch' him at those slight, unconscious brushes, her narrowed brown eyes like a stone polished with fire. She knew, not because she felt his touch, but because of her own instant reaction. His presence would brush hers, and the walls would go up, like a Dionidon raising its quills. Purely instinctual. Her spine would stiffen; at those times, she gazed at him as if she couldn't see who he was.

'No hokey business, kid," Han would tease gently, so surprisingly precise with his use of humor. But in his hazel eyes, too, Luke saw a protectiveness-- despite the fact Leia didn't need it, despite the fact it always annoyed her, a little. He often wondered if his friend knew, could understand, the anger--

__

(i cut off his hand, his hand...)

--the desire to shield--

__

('if you will not turn, perhaps she will')

--with which he had once fought, for his sister.

"I'm sorry," Luke said presently, not looking up. "I didn't mean to intrude." Mother's blocks were different, strange, like a world seen through distorted glass. More disturbing, perhaps, for the half-shapes one could see.

"It's alright," Mother's voice was as smooth as the balm Leia had often applied to his wounds. "I know you didn't mean to."

Now he did look at her, blue eyes wide, "Are you--"

"A Jedi?" the tone in her voice was odd. "No."

"But you can sense me," Luke pressed.

"I am not a Jedi," she repeated with a gentled firmness in her voice. Her smile fluttered briefly to something more sad, and she shook her head, a single curl obscuring her profile. "I am-- was-- used to the feeling. There were rumors of a Force-sensitive born in my mother's family some generations back, but... if there were any records, they were destroyed. For our protection. I was never tested; the Force binds me as it binds us all, but I can not touch it." She bit delicately into a slice of fruit, eyes shining, reflecting everything and nothing at all.

Watching her, Luke could only frown. Ben's voice came to him, speaking of an Order of Knights that had served and protected the galaxy since the birth of the Old Republic. Warriors with a code of honor, a dedication to peace, or else defense.

Protection, then, from whom?

He touched his lightsaber, wondering at her words, at her quiet recitation of something he himself had learned. Mother's gaze caught and followed his; she lifted her hand, uncurling her fingers in invitation.

"May I see it?" she asked, nodding towards the still hilt. Nodding, he unhooked it, watch her take hold. Gingerly, she held it away from herself, fingers tracing the patterns, the construction. Luke had a sudden, vivid image of Yoda, the small Master's clawed hands continually correcting the grip of his clumsy human student. Mother's grip was almost perfect-- deftly, she flipped the switch.

"Similar..." she said softly, face bathed in the emerald of the blade. "You made this yourself." Calmly, she deactivated it, turning her wrist over so he could take it back. "It's well made."

"Thank you," he said, throat closing over the quiet pride within him. "I---" He found himself grasping her hands in his own. It was important, overwhelmingly so, that he make her see, impart to her all the things that others did not, would not understand. In the deep, still opal depths of her eyes, he saw a kinship he had not expected to find. "He saved me," Luke said earnestly. "That's how Father died-- saving me."

Mother's hands were gone-- she was sitting back against the wall, fingers over her cheeks, face in her palms. She shook for a moment, silently, before sitting up gracefully, the fire in her eyes the kind that forged.

"Tell me," she said, words partly an entreaty, partly a regal command. "Don't leave anything out, even if you think it will spare me. Please, tell me now."


End file.
